THE Minister for Information, Culture, Arts and Sports, Mr Nape Nnauye, has defended the decision by Parliament to establish its own studio to control broadcasts of its sessions before being aired by other radio and television stations.
Instead, according to the minister, the stations would receive the signals through the satellite for public consumption. The minister was debating budget estimates of the Prime Minister’s Office presented last week.
The new studio will be operating under Clean Feed and independent radio and television stations would need to hook frequencies of Parliament, if they would need to broadcast live Bunge sessions.
The Parliament studio will be processing information on its own before circulating to other media organs.
Minister Nnauye, therefore, refuted the claims by the opposition camp that through the Parliamentary studio, there would be total blackout of Parliamentary proceedings and that would deny wananchi their constitutional rights of being informed of what was going on.
“Maybe this is a question of understanding.
What people are being targeted here? We are talking of wananchi who woke up in the morning and went to their respective working places and in the evening get opportunity to know what transpired in Parliament,” he said.
The minister pointed out that statistics were showing that under the current arrangement of not beaming live the parliamentary proceedings, the number of citizens who are monitoring sessions has tremendously increased.
He further brushed aside claims that the system has been abruptly introduced by Parliament office without consultation and approval of the National Assembly.
The Minister pointed out that such system was passed by Parliament in the 2015/2016 budget session in presence of all MPs.
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